The Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature is pleased to state that registrations are still being accepted  for the following conference:

“Peace the World Together with Children’s Books” is the theme of the International Board on Books for Young People regional conference hosted by California State University, Fresno this fall.

Co-sponsored by the Arne Nixon Center at Fresno State, IBBY’s 9^th United States Regional Conference will be held at Fresno State on Oct. 21-23.

Conference chair Ellis Vance of Fresno said about 250 people – professors, librarians, teachers, authors, illustrators, publishers, collectors and fans – are expected. Registration so far includes participants from 48 states and every continent except Antarctica, Vance said.

The conference offers an opportunity to interact with authors and illustrators around the world, including Alma Flor Ada, Shirin Yim Bridges, F. Isabel Campoy, David Diaz, Margarita Engle, Kathleen Krull, Grace Lin, Roger Mello, Beverly Naidoo, Pam Muñoz Ryan and Peter Sis. Petunia’s Place Bookstore will sell books.

Activities will include exhibitions (including one by the International Youth Library), book discussion groups and tours. Optional activities are available to those who stay on beyond the conference closing at noon on Oct. 23. They include a tour of the Shinzen Japanese Garden in Fresno and a one-day bus trip to Yosemite National Park.

For information on the conference and registration visit www.usbby.org/conf_home.htm.

The Américas Book Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature is given in recognition of U.S. works of fiction, poetry, folklore, or selected non-fiction (from picture books to works for young adults) published in the previous year in English or Spanish that authentically and engagingly portray Latin America, the Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States. The award, which is sponsored by the U.S. Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP), reaches beyond national borders to focus on the the diversity of cultural heritage throughout the continents of North and South America.

The award winners and commended titles are selected for their:

distinctive literary quality;
cultural contextualization;
exceptional integration of text, illustration and design;
potential for classroom use.

2011 Américas Award Winners

Clemente! by Willie Perdomo. Illustrated by Bryan Collier. Holt, 2010.
The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan, Illustrated by Peter Sis. Scholastic, 2010.

Américas Award Honorable Mention

The Firefly Letters by Margarita Engle. Holt, 2010.

The full commended list can be found here. The winning books will be honored at a ceremony during Hispanic Heritage Month (15 September – 15 October 2010) at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

February has arrived and with it Black History Month in Canada and African American History Month in the USA. To see some of the celebrations planned in the USA click here and in Canada click here. In honor of the month, many websites and bloggers are highlighting the richness of children’s literature that focuses on Africa, African Americans, African Canadians and the African diaspora. Here’s a small sample of what’s being offered:

The Brown Bookshelf has launched 28 Days Later, a month-long showcase of the best in picture books, middle grade and young adult novels written and illustrated by African Americans.

Margo Tenenbaum’s blog The Fourth Musketeer specializes in historical fiction for children and teens, and throughout the month of February will focus on reviewing African American titles.

Reading Rockets.Org has just updated it’s Black History Month section where you’ll discover great online resources for the classroom and for family discussions. I’ve just spent the morning watching the video interviews with award-winning writers and illustrators.

The Canadian Children’s Book Centre has compiled a list of Canadian books that are recommended reads for Black History Month.

Check out School Library Journal‘s Places in the Heart: Celebrating Black History Month article in which top children’s authors were asked to choose their favorite children’s book about the black experience. Rick Margolis says “The title could be for kids of any age—from a picture book or graphic novel to a chapter book or collection of poems. We told them it could be new or old, fiction or nonfiction. The only requirement? It had to be a book that they truly loved—and, of course, it couldn’t be one of their own.”  Grace Lin, Mitali Perkins, Cynthia Kadohata,  Pam Muñoz Ryan, Pat Mora and others share their answers here,

If there is a website or blog that you’ve come across we would love to know about it. Please share it with us and our readers by leaving a comment.

Australian author Susanne Gervay (visit her website and blog) has had a very busy year this year and social justice has been high on her agenda. She is one of the contributors to Fear Factor: Terror Incognito, an anthology of short stories featuring ten Australian and ten Indian writers, edited by Meenakshi Bharat and Sharon Rundle (Macmillan Australia/ Picador India, 2010). She has been writing about her travels to India and Kiribati, a “Pacific atoll nation drowning under climate change”. She has just launched Always Jack, the third book about Jack, following on from her wonderful I Am Jack and Super Jack. Most recently, Susanne was in South Korea for the Nambook-010 Fesival, the 5th Nami Island International Children’s Book Festival. She was there because she was taking part in Peace Story, a very special project. We are very grateful to Susanne for telling us all about it here. For those of us who couldn’t be there in person, Susanne’s description and photographs are definitely the next best thing!

In these troubled times with North Korea’s military attack on South Korea, the international publication of Peace Story is poignant and important. Twenty-two children’s authors and twenty-two illustrators from twenty-two countries engaged in an international cooperative to create a unique anthology, Peace Story, for young people. Respected academic author on Irish children’s literature Valerie Coghlan and Irish Laureate for children’s literature Siobhán Parkinson were the co-editors of Peace Story.

‘Peace Story’ was part of the Nami Island International Children’s Book Festival, South Korea which was first held in 2005 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen. It is a six-week bi-annual festival of children’s books, the environment and peace, featuring outstanding exhibitions of children’s books and illustrations from all over the world. Much loved Korean illustrator Kang Woo-hyon, President of the Nambook-010 International Committee headed the ‘Peace Story’ project with the support of the Nami Island Minn family who published and translated some of the stories, and hosted the authors and illustrators on Nami Island. It was supported by National YMCA Korea, UNICEF and UNESCO Korea, the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism, and Nami Island the official sponsor of the IBBY Hans Christian Anderson Awards.

My Australian story ‘To East Timor with Love Australia’, illustrated by the award-winning Frané Lessac, opens the anthology Peace Story. Frané Lessac’s vibrant colours of bright pink bougainvillea and yellow-centred frangipanis create a visual representation of loss of homeland through war, but also hope for the future. (more…)

PaperTigers: Your life has been a tapestry of living in many cultures—in France, Spain, England, the United States, Nigeria, India. How has this helped you as a writer?

Katia: This is an interesting question. How does life in general help and/or affect us as writers? I would say every experience shapes us, and what we are shows up inevitably in what we write. I could not have written Amadi’s story if I had not lived in Nigeria. On the other hand, it must be said that a life spent traveling or living in vastly different countries (even if I also find similarities from one to another) has made me slightly jaded. I’m so used to witnessing diverse ways of living, eating, dressing, even driving a car on the road (!) that it takes more and more to surprise me. I notice that particularly when we have guests. Some of the things that amaze them, I have come to view as part of my daily routine or panorama.

PaperTigers: It’s been said that writing a picture book is as demanding as writing a poem. Each word must be precise, the use of language must be economical, and the images evocative. Longer forms of fiction can be more forgiving. Why did you choose this difficult form for Amadi’s story? And would you choose it again?

Katia:I love the picture book format. I love the conversation between the art and the words on the page, how they are meant to complement each other. I think that writers who are also artists are very lucky to be able to experience this medium in its full beauty, and difficulty. Amadi came to me that way : it was a turning point in the life of a young boy, related to a particular instance, and something that needed to be resolved quickly. And yes, I have three other picture book manuscripts that I hope will find a home. Children love pictures. They love being able to suspend the flow of a story to examine an image, notice details, talk about the expression on the face of a character, the background, etc.

PaperTigers:As a mother of two girls, why did you decide to write about a boy? Is there a “real-life” Amadi? How did you manage to enter the heart and mind of a small “Igbo man of Nigeria” and give him such complete life on the page?

Katia:There is no “real-life” Amadi, but there are lots of boys just like him. The problem of these boys dropping out of school to earn quick money in the street is very real. As for entering the heart and mind of Amadi, I think it’s the reverse. Amadi entered my own mind and started telling me his story. I just had to write it down. (more…)

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, our website currently features Juan Felipe Herrera’s personal essay, “Apartment Heritage”, in which he beautifully reminisces about his relatives’ one-bedroom apartment in San Diego, where he lived with his family in the 1960′s. The essay uses the apartment as a metaphor for his identity formation, contrasting the life inside it — an “invisible library of culture and family histories”— to the life outside— “that uncanny, whirling splish-splash of chaos, unfiltered, untold.”

Much of Herrera’s work is autobiographical, and two of his books, Downtown Boy (Scholastic. Ages 12+), winner of the 2007 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, and Upside Down Boy, illustrated by Elizabeth Gómez (Children’s Book Press. Ages 4-8), were inspired by his childhood as the son of migrant workers in the 1950′s. His family experienced what many thousands of others do who choose or are forced to leave their homeland to search for better, more secure lives.

For many years Herrera traveled with his parents through the small farming towns of California’s Central Valley, changing schools with the seasons, always the “new boy,” always yearning for stability. Stability, however, brought its own set of conflicts: between languages; between old and new; between tradition and change. In Downtown Boy, his mom worries about the lure of life in the city’s barrio, and urges him to stay “close to home.” But where is home when you have been moving around for so long?

With so many influences and so much to reconcile and draw from, it’s no surprise that Herrera not only became a poet, writer and performance artist but also founded bilingual theater, music and poetry troupes that travel the world, telling and singing stories of pride in heritage—and in newness.

Herrera’s recent poetry books for adults have been enthusiastically reviewed in The New York Times.

For more by other writers about Latino migrant workers, their struggles and accomplishments, see The Circuit, Harvesting Hope, Esperanza Rising and First Day in Grapes.

After our Jul/Aug special literacy focus, we now make way for Hispanic Heritage Month (Sep 15 – Oct 15), a celebration of the cultures and traditions of US residents who trace their roots back to Spain, Mexico and the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The theme this year is “Getting Involved: Our Families, Our Community, Our Nation.”

There will be all sorts of events happening throughout the country, and here’s what you’ll find on our website: interviews with author Pam Muñoz Ryan and youth services librarian Rose Zertuche-Treviño; gallery features showcasing the work of David Diaz and Susan Guevara; original heritage-related essays by Yuyi Morales and Juan Felipe Herrera, and plenty more. So dive in, and have fun – and check back here, too, as we continue the fiesta of Hispanic Heritage Month by blogging about it through Oct 15. There’s plenty of pride, information and fun to be gained from going deeper into this celebration!

November 12-18 celebrates the 88th Children’s Book Week in the United States.

The ability to read and understand complicated information is essential to success in school and in the workplace. So much of today’s information is only available through the written word – in books, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, etc. Unfortunately, the statistics are staggering: analysis of the National Assessment of Educational Progress long-term trend reading assessments reveals that “by age 17, only about 1 in 17 seventeen year olds can read and gain information from specialized text, for example the science section in the local newspaper.”

During Children’s Book Week, parents, educators and caregivers are encouraged to face the challenge and take a stand: children cannot “Rise Up” to this challenge without first developing a love of reading.

A poem by Pam Munõz Ryan is featured on this year’s bookmark. Special publicity displays were created by various illustrators, including Ana Juan and Jon J. Muth. Proceeds from the sale of materials help support CBC‘s literacy efforts.